All posts by Manuel Lamiroy

The beginning of a new year is traditionally a time when the experts make their predictions for the year to come. The field of legal technology is no exception. Most of the predictions focus on Artificial Intelligence (AI), blockchain and security, but there also are predictions with regard to the legal market in general, the cloud, and eDiscovery. Let’s have a closer look.

Legal Market

The American Bar Association’s 2018 Legal Technology Report revealed that in 2018 fewer law firms invested in legal technology than in 2017. Because of this, experts expect a stagnation in the amount of law firms who are investing in legal technology. The amount of money being invested by law firms still is increasing, as is the amount of money being invested by legal technology solution providers. The legal technology market itself is therefore expected to keep on expanding.

Experts do not anticipate significant changes in the software and services that the lawyers are using, nor in how law firms are charging their clients. The market of Alternative Legal Services Providers (ALSPs) will keep on growing, and some of these Alternative Legal Services Providers will come into their own as major players.

Artificial Intelligence (AI)

IBM predicts three major breakthroughs in the field of AI which will lead enterprises to increasingly advance, scale, and trust artificial intelligence. These three breakthroughs are:

Causality will increasingly replace correlations: at present Machine Learning algorithms discovers patterns, i.e. correlations, but the nature of those correlations still hasn’t been qualified. The breakthrough will consist in qualifying those correlations and determine what is cause and effect.

Trusted AI will take centre stage: methodologies are being developed for a better cooperation between humans and AI, where humans can trust the output generated by AI systems.

A Move Towards “Transparent AI” (i.e. where AI systems can reveal how they draw their conclusions. This ties in with the concept of “trusted AI”, mentioned above).

AI and automation are drilling deeper into every business

More jobs will be created by AI than will be lost to it.

AI assistants will become truly useful

In a separate article, other experts predict a rise in applications that combine video, voice and AI to improve human interactions, sales, customer service, and meetings.

More specific to the field of Legal AI, experts predict an increase in smart contracts, as well as an increased use of blockchain based solutions. Law firms are becoming smarter in what technologies to use, which leads to a higher adoption of legal AI: AI will augment existing solutions. AI is also expected to play a more important role in the design of legal software and its interfaces. One expert predicts that the increased usage of AI will lead to lower fees, thus facilitating access to justice. One of the fields that is expected to grow is legal analytics (including judicial analytics). As a result of this the roles of Chief Analytics Officer (CAO) or Chief Data Officer (CDO) will become more prevalent in law firms.

Cybersecurity

A lot of the predictions have to do with cybersecurity. Law firms have a lot of valuable data and are prime targets for cybercriminals.

One of the world’s foremost experts in building AI systems to detect malware points out that cybercriminals have started using what he calls “offensive AI”, i.e. AI systems that are specifically designed to attack computer systems. As a result, malware, e.g., gets smarter and better at evading protection against it. In turn, cybersecurity companies are increasingly using AI as well to ward off cyberattacks and to detect those technologies that are aimed at evading protection.

All experts anticipate cybercrime will rise in 2019. They expect increases in:

Data breaches and data leaks, with an emphasis on the latter

Browser crypto-mining, or crypto-jacking, i.e. where your browser is hijacked to mine cryptocurrencies

Web skimmers: just like you have hardware to illegally clone credit cards, web skimmers use websites to illegally get your credit card details

Expert specifically expect an increase in botnets that use “Internet of Things” devices

Dedicated Denial of Service (DDos) Attacks

Ransomware

Financial crime, i.e. cyberattacks on banks and other financial institutions

Email social engineering attacks, also known as BECs, or Business Email Compromises

Exploit kits, i.e. web-based applications that redirect users to malicious sites where they attempt to exploit a browser vulnerability to infect the user with malware.

Cloud servers, too, are in trouble in 2019. Cloud servers have slowly become the favourite target of cryptocurrency mining trojans.

As more and more hacking tools are becoming available, experts foresee an increase in underground communities of hackers and cybercriminals.

Malvertising will continue to gain sophistication in 2019.

Cloud

Over the last years, law firms have increasingly started using cloud technologies. That growth is expected to continue, as law firms have largely overcome their hesitance to use cloud-based solutions.

eDiscovery

The GDPR has had a great impact on legal eDiscovery. As more and more countries (and States within the US) are implementing similar legislation, experts believe we are reaching a tipping point for the protection of personal data privacy in legal discovery.

2019 will also see new ways to exploit the power of analytics across the entire e-discovery workflow. ‘Active learning’ will be used as a supplemental tool to support traditional reviews. And as eDiscovery requires data transfers to service providers, those transfers will increasingly become targets for hackers and cybercriminals.

We are also witnessing an increasingly globalized eDiscovery, and as a result there will be an increase in demand for translations.

Blockchain

In 2019, we will approach Blockchain more realistically. Many fantastic visions of 2017 and 2018 were a little ahead of schedule, and many projects have failed to deliver. With a more realistic approach, Blockchain will finally move past the hype into reality and Blockchain adoption is expected to spike across sectors, and to start converging with the Internet of Things (IoT).

Security experts anticipate that Blockchain will help prevent unauthorized access. They also see advancements in privacy-preserving techniques for blockchain: these techniques combined with blockchain can enable new decentralized applications that protect data while providing users with transparency and control over how data is used.

To address the issue of energy consumption costs, which are skyrocketing because of the computing power needed, in 2019 we will also see hardware-based acceleration of cryptographic techniques.

The market of legal services is changing, and so is the legal business model. Largely upon the request of their clients, law firms are shifting from billable hours to alternative fee arrangements (AFAs). The most commonly used alternative fee arrangement is charging flat fees. In this article we’ll have a closer look at what they are, what types there are, what the benefits and risks are, when and when not to use flat fees, and lastly how to set the price for the flat fees you’ll be charging. That last item will be continued in a follow-up article.

Peggy Gruenke, from www.attorneyatwork.com, defines a flat fee as follows: “A flat fee is simply a prearranged, agreed-on total fee that is paid up-front, or at least a portion of it is, to complete all work required for a particular matter.”

There typically are two kinds of flat fees, which has to do with how the fee is calculated. The first type is referred to as “cost plus” pricing, where the price is set by calculating the costs and adding a fair profit margin. For law firms, if they have certain types of cases that they do on a regular basis, they could, e.g., calculate the average time and cost of previous cases, and use that. The alternative is referred to as value pricing where you set the price based on what the service you offer is worth for the client. We’ll come back to how to set the price for flat fees later on.

There are both benefits and risks to using flat fees. The benefits include:

Flat fees are something clients want and like.

Flat fees eliminate surprises: clients knows in advance how much they will have to pay, and you know how much you will make.

Knowing in advance how much something will cost lowers the threshold for clients to hire a lawyer, which means you get access to more clients.

Since flat fees usually are (at least partially) paid up-front, you have no problems getting paid: you just don’t start work until you get paid.

Using value pricing to set your fee, where the fees is calculated on the value your services bring to the client, typically results in a higher profit margin for the lawyer.

There also are risks:

It can be hard to calculate the total fee beforehand, especially when opposing parties are involved. (See below).

If additional hours are incurred, those may be passed on to the lawyer.

There’s a potential for reduced profit margins or even losses, if the matter takes substantially more time than expected.

What these risks show is that flat fees have limited uses. They aren’t suited for all cases or all law firms. You’ll have to determine when and when not to charge flat fees. Flat fees are not advised when it’s hard to estimate in advance how much time and effort will be needed. Ruth Carter, e.g., avoids using flat feels in cases where there is an opposing party, like settlements or litigation, because you usually cannot anticipate what all they will come up with. There are exceptions of course in scenarios that are common and/or simple like, e.g., handling traffic fines. Typically, flat fees are well suited when the time that is needed is predictable. It works well, e.g., for transactions like copyrights, trademarks, and contract drafting and reviews.

Sometimes, lawyers charge a hybrid fee (or a “flat fee plus”, as Ruth Carter calls them) where flat fees and hourly billing are combined. This usually involves charging a flat fee for a project with a limited scope and then charging the client your hourly rate for any work performed beyond that. Billie Tarascio, e.g., a divorce lawyer, uses a hybrid model of hourly fees for certain work and combines those with flat fee charges for predictable items like drafting pleadings, attending hearings, etc.

So, before you start charging flat fees, there are some questions you have to ask yourself. The first questions is whether your clients are asking for flat-fee options. If they’re not, do you have a good reason to switch? When introducing your flat fees to your clients, have you clearly defined expectations, fees and scope? Have you thought about your overhead? How many flat-fee cases do you need per month to cover expenses and pay yourself?

Once those questions are answered, you can determine how to set your flat fees. As mentioned above, you can use either value pricing or “cost plus” pricing. If you want to charge flat fees for a service you have already been offering for a while, the “cost plus” model is fairly easy to implement as you already have all the necessary information with regard to scope, time needed, costs involved, etc. (If you are using law firm management software, it is easy retrieve all of this information).

Most authors, however, suggest using value pricing instead because it is better suited for optimizing your profit margins. Now, and especially when you are new to it, value pricing is not easy, since you have to know how to measure value and identify the factors that determine what brings value to your clients. Mark Wickersham, who wrote a book on “Using value pricing to grow your business” (that is available for free online), rightfully points out that value pricing is hard because of three reasons: 1) Value is subjective; it can’t be touched, felt or measured. 2) Everybody values things differently. And 3) because every client has unique requirements.

In a follow-up article we’ll go into how to set your price when using value pricing.

As we are taking our first steps into 2019, it may be useful to evaluate what 2018 brought us on the Legal Technology front. Robert Ambrogi, from lawsitesblog.com, published an article on the 20 most important Legal Technology developments in 2018. And, as usual, the American Bar Association (ABA) also published its annual Legal Technology Survey Report in December 2018, which offers great insights as well. Let us start with the latter.

The Full ABA Legal Techology Survey Report consists of six volumes:

Technology Basics and Security

Law Office Technology

Online Research

Marketing and Communication Technology

Litigation Technology and E-Discovery

Mobile Lawyers

These six volumes can be bought either separately, or combined, here. A summary of the survey in five separate reports can be read online for free here. These reports deal with:

Budgeting and planning

Solo and small firm

Practice management

Technology Training

Litigation and TAR (Technology Assisted Review)

Here are the highlights.

One of the most surprising findings of the report is that the percentage of firms that budget for technology has undergone a slight decrease compared to last year. Where in 2017, 60 percent of law firms had a legal tech budget, that number is down to 57% in 2018. As was the case in the past, the percentage of law firms that have a technology budget increases with the firm’s size. The report found that 34 percent of solo respondents, 53 percent of firms of two to nine attorneys, 77 percent of firms of 10 to 49 attorneys, 83 percent of firms with 100 to 499 attorneys, and 87 percent of firms of 500 or more attorneys had technology budgets.

Another surprising finding is that while telecommuting or remote working overall is on the rise (as expected), it has decreased in larger firms. Among solo practitioners and law firms with 2-9 attorneys, the percentage of people who telecommute has gone up from 38% in 2015 to 46% in 2018, and from 58% in 2015 to 68% in 2018, respectively. In larger firms, however, the percentage has dropped from a high of 87% in 2015 to a low of 79% in 2018 in firms with 10-49 attorneys, and from a high of 94% in 2016 to a low of 88% in 2018 for the bigger ones.

Attorneys continue to use practice management software at a steady rate at firms of all sizes. The functionality of the software that is available to them hasn’t really changed in that managing clients and conflicts still is at the core of all of them. The amount of law firms using practice management software has remained steady over the last years (with the exception of some spikes in 2016).

Most attorneys are satisfied with the practice management software they use, as 32% reported “very satisfied” with the features and functions therein and 61% reporting “somewhat satisfied,” for a total of 93% that were somewhat or more satisfied.

Not much has changed with regard to the software law firms are using, and there is still plenty of room for improvement, especially when it comes to integration with other applications.

The GDPR has had an important impact which resulted in the removal of quite a lot of metadata. The usage of software that focuses on the removal of metadata is rising, which benefits privacy and confidentiality.

Another finding of the report is that the line between tablets and laptops is blurring. In solo and small law firms, the percentage of tablet users dropped from 57% in 2016 to 47% in 2018. In larger firms, however, the number of tablet users has increased: in firms with 100-499 attorneys, the percentage has increased from 32% in 2015 to 53% in 2018. In firms with more than 500 attorneys, 39% of attorneys use tablets.

There is virtually no change in how lawyers charged in 2018, compared to 2017. Hourly fees remain the most popular (at 69%), followed by fixed fees (15%), contingency fees (11%, which depend on the result achieved), retainer fees (4%, where the client pays an advance on a regular basis, typically monthly), and other (1%).

In his article on The 20 Most Important Legal Technology Developments Of 2018, Robert Ambrogi mentions several developments that are relevant worldwide:

Analytics become essential: in 2018 more and more law firms started analysing the data they collect.

Legal tech goes global: until recently legal tech largely consisted of national playing fields, but now we are seeing more and more legal technology services that are being offered internationally.

Because of AI, Legal research gets smarter and more comprehensive.

Investment are increasing. In the US alone, $1 billion USD was invested in legal technology.

The cloud no longer looms ominous. More and more law firms have dropped their reservations and are now effectively using cloud services.

Tech competence gets real.

AI gets an MBA.

Startups continue to proliferate.

In conclusion: the legal technology market keeps evolving, but the use of legal technology in law firms has not taken any large steps in recent years.

Every year, towards the end of the year, Good2bSocial (www.good2bsocial.com) publishes a ‘Social Law Firm Index’. It is a study of digital marketing adoption, use, and best practices in the legal industry. The report aims to determine the effectiveness of law firms’ efforts and includes reviews and rankings of the US top law firms. It assesses the firms’ publicly available thought leadership content, and measures social media reach, engagement, and marketing performance on specific social platforms, such as Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram. Here are some of the highlights of the 2018 Social Law Firm Index.

Let’s start with some general observations on trends:

There still is an ongoing rapid increase in the use of digital technology and social media among law firms.

There also is a noticeable surge in video adoption. (See below).

Firms are maximizing the potential of interactive content:Interactive content is one of the best ways for law firms to facilitate engagement across digital channels like email and social media. In 2018, there was a trend towards interactive content such as free tools, polls, and surveys.

When it comes to the actual content, more firms are crafting client-centric thought leadership and social media content that aims to address client desires rather than simply touting a firm’s bona fides. (On Twitter, especially, there was a major increase in high-quality, non-promotional firm content.)

Compared to 2017, we can notice shifting priorities and shifting channels:Law firms are getting smarter about setting aside social platforms that don’t reach their target audiences or provide a return on investment. Facebook, which was hit by several scandals in the last year, in particular saw a major decline in use amongst firms.

There’s an increasing need for paid social. (See Below).

The study closely examines how firms are using digital platforms to communicate and amplify thought leadership. Good2bSocial believes that a law firm’s most valuable resource is its intellectual assets. They therefore define thought leadership as material that, for the purposes of business development, communicates to potential clients and others information about those assets. These communications can take the form of articles, client alerts, tool kits, videos, podcasts, and blogs.

The report also looked for what characterizes the best and worst performers. The best performing firms are demonstrating the greatest comprehensive adoption, integration, and use of social media and content marketing to market and grow their practices. Their messaging is coherent, consistent, and current across platforms, and best practices are evident at all stages of execution. They displayed the following characteristics, some of which were mentioned above in the general trends:

Video Takes Over: In 2017, 26% of law firms used it; in 2018, 36% does. Take content like testimonials, case studies, and blog posts, and turn them into videos for a more engaging way to connect with your target audience.

Interactive Content is Key: Use interactive content like polls, surveys, and free assessment tools to understand your clients and provide them with future content that you know they’ll find valuable.

Thinking like a Client: Use surveys and polls to inform your content strategy. You can’t write the right content if you don’t know what your clients or prospects care about.

Quality over Quantity: Aim for at least 70 percent of your social media messages to be original, non-promotional content like blog posts and client alerts.

Shifting Priorities and Shifting Channels: Analyse and measure which social networks are the most effective for your law firm. Then, prioritize the ones that bring you the highest ROI. While Facebook is still effective for law firms trying to reach consumers, corporate law firms are finding that they’re better off using LinkedIn and Twitter.

Rise of Paid Social: Thirty percent of law firms surveyed reported using paid social in order to enhance the reach of their social media messages. Facebook and LinkedIn are equally popular choices when it comes to firms investing in sponsored content on social.

The characteristics of the worst performers, on the other hand, fall in two categories. First, there are the abandoned profiles, i.e. profiles on social media that are no longer updated. Secondly, there are all the missed engagement opportunities. The following best social media engagements practices were not observed:

Sharing blog content on social media channels: it’s not enough to publish a blog article. Let the world know about it on social media. This not only applies to new articles but also to older ones that are still relevant.

Employee Advocacy: Employee advocacy has the power to exponentially increase the reach of your law firm’s thought leadership content.

Engage / interact with others: like, retweet, comment, mention key influencers and thought leaders. Following social media best practices like influencer marketing, using hashtags, and posting content multiple times are too often forgotten and lead to missed opportunities for law firms to generate awareness and clients.

An exciting new field of activity within Legal Technology is Legal Design. The underlying idea is simple: how can we apply principles of design (in the broad sense, including software design, graphic design, functional design) to the law in order to improve the user experience of all stakeholders? It is a vast field, to which books and courses are dedicated. So in this article, we will only be able to scratch the surface. If you are interested in Legal Design, and want to find out more, have a look at the websites of Margaret Hagan, www.lawbydesign.co, and of the Legal Design Lab of Stanford Law School and d. School, www.legaltechdesign.com.

How can Legal Design be defined? It is the application of human-centered design-thinking principles to the practice of law, to make legal systems, products, services and processes more useful, useable, understandable and engaging for all. “Legal Design is a way of assessing and creating legal services, with a focus on how usable, useful, and engaging these services are. It is an approach with three main sets of resources — process, mindsets, and mechanics — for legal professionals to use. These three resources can help us conceive, build, and test better ways of doing things in law, that will engage and empower both lay people and legal professionals. ” (Margaret Hagan)

Legal Design can be very useful. Virtually every aspect of our lives is regulated in some way or another. Unfortunately, there is a serious disconnect between the law and the legal consumers: contracts are made by lawyers and sometimes only understood by lawyers. The court system often is an incomprehensible maze that appears to be more interested in creating obstacles than in offering solutions for legal issues. Every product you buy or every service you use has terms and conditions that typically need to be studied in detail before you can understand them, etc.

With Legal Design, we can reduce that disconnect by focusing on a “human-centered approach in which the users’ needs, wants and desires are first identified and then used as a basis to design and develop solutions. The result is legal information and services that are transparent, accessible, visually clearer and as mentioned above, useable, understandable, useful and engaging. When applied in a strategic manner, legal design can improve performance, innovation, brand perception, audience engagement, conversion rates and many other metrics” (Meera Sivanathan).

As such, Legal Design aims to deliver legal services and products that are (1) usable, (2) useful, and (3) engaging. Legal Design therefore has three orders of goals:

Helping the lay person and the legal professional;

Creating a better front-end to the legal system and a better back-end;

Working for incremental short-term improvements and breakthrough long-term change.

Some examples: somebody’s will or a contract or a regulation can be made more comprehensible if it is shown in a chart of infographic. Legal chatbots and robots like DoNotPay make taking legal action as easy as filling out online forms. Legal education, training and practice benefit from improved (typically visual) communication tools, etc.

Legal Design is already being applied in the following areas:

Legal Design Process (which typically deals with analysing processes and systems in order to streamline them and create a better user experience),

In her online book, Law by Design, Margaret Hagan explains that Legal Design offers the following benefits:

Improved Problem Solving: To be more forward-thinking and creative in generating solutions for problems.

Client-centered Services: To put the focus on the client, and win clients in better ways, deliver them better services tailored to their explicit (and buried) needs — and to communicate information to them in clearer, more compelling, and more usable ways.

Better Communication: To communicate information — particularly complex legal information — in a clearer, more compelling, and more usable way.

Richer Legal Profession: To build a new set of professional paths and opportunities for lawyers, with new kinds of jobs and competencies.

New Products & Services: To generate ideas of how to serve clients, lawyers, and the general public in new ways — through technology or otherwise, and to build ideas into viable products and businesses.

In a previous article, we have written about Artificial Intelligence (AI) and contracts. AI is having an impact in three areas when it comes to contracts: 1. contract review, 2. contract management and automation, and 3. smart contracts. While smart contracts are automated contracts, what sets them apart from other automated contracts is the usage of Blockchain technology.

What are smart contracts? We’ll combine elements from the definitions Tech Republic and the Investopedia to explain: A smart contract is a software-based contract between a buyer and a seller. The software automates the business processes and the conditions of fulfilment contained within the contract. The code programmed into the contract actually makes the contract self-executing so that it takes action whenever a specific condition is triggered within the contract. The code and the agreements contained therein exist across a distributed, decentralized Blockchain network. Smart contracts permit trusted transactions and agreements to be carried out among disparate, anonymous parties without the need for a central authority, legal system, or external enforcement mechanism. They render transactions traceable, transparent, and irreversible. Because the smart contract is software capable of automating business processes and contract fulfilment automatically, it eliminates the need for managers and middlemen supervision.

Let’s give an example: A is a supplier of products for B. Every month, B places an order with A. It makes sense to automate this process. The smart contract is a piece of software that, e.g., would contain the code that says if an order is received by A from B, and B is not in arrears, then that order must be executed. Now, with smart contracts these transactions are typically registered in a distributed, decentralized Blockchain network of ledgers. In a previous article we explained that Blockchain is a technology that registers transactions in a ledger, where everybody in the network has a copy of that ledger. Transactions are secured by using a verification code that is calculated based on all previous transactions in the ledger. In essence, to forge a transaction, one would therefore have to forge all registrations of all transactions in all ledgers.

The benefits of smart contracts are clear: the whole process of transactions between parties can be automated, and by using Blockchain technology one has virtually irrefutable proof of the transactions. Add to that that programming code tends to be less ambiguous than the generic legalese of traditional contracts, so the chances of disputes about the interpretation of smart contracts are smaller.

The usage of smart contracts is expected to grow fast. A survey published in Forbes Magazine predicts that by 2022, 25% of all companies will be using them. Basically in any market where Blockchain technology is useful, one can expect smart contracts to be useful, too. Smart contracts can also be the perfect complement to E.D.I. At present, smart contract applications are already being used in – or developed for – supply chains and logistics, in finance and securities, real estate, management and operations, healthcare, insurance, etc.

Still, one has to be aware of the limitations of smart contracts, as there are a number of legal issues to take into account. The name ‘smart contracts’ is misleading in that they aren’t really contracts but software. As such, there are legal concerns with regard to:

Offer and acceptance: is there even a binding contract, if there is no human interaction or supervision, and the transaction is completely executed automatically?

The evidentiary value: smart contracts are not written evidence of agreed rights and obligations because they encapsulate only a portion of any rights and obligations that is related to contractual performance

Jurisdiction: is the area of jurisdiction clearly defined in case of a conflict or dispute?

Dispute Resolution: are there any dispute resolution mechanisms in place?

When considering working with smart contracts, it is therefore a good idea to first come to a framework agreement in which these issues are addressed. And those will preferably still be written by lawyers.

Email marketing is a valuable tool for lawyers, with many benefits. It is still seen as the top medium for return on investment by 70% of digital marketers. It is pretty straightforward to get started, and with limited resources you can reach a global audience, have an instant impact, maintain customer loyalty, etc. Add to that that emails are easy to share, and that their impact is easy to measure. You can deliver targeted messages, drive revenue, etc. One of the most obvious advantages of email marketing is its lower cost compared to mainstream marketing channels. As a lawyer, however, you must keep in mind that there are not only legal (GDPR compliance, e.g.) but also ethical considerations.

What types of emails can or should you send? Joleena Louis mentions six different types:

The Welcome Email, e.g. when you get a new client, but also when somebody signs up to your blog.

The Tools or Resources Email, where you share helpful information with clients: URLs, seminars/webinars, eBooks, etc.

The Asking Email, where you ask your clients for feedback or assistance.

The Content Email, where, e.g., you share a new blog post you’ve written.

The Curated Email, where you share interesting content by other authors.

The Newsletter Email.

The list is not exhaustive. You can also send out different types of reminders, birthday and holiday wishes, etc.

So, how does one go about organizing an email campaign? In essence, there are four major aspects to keep in mind: your target audience(s); the message you want to deliver to that target audience; the presentation of the message; and how it will be delivered. Let’s have a look at those.

Your Target Audience: who do you send your email campaign to? The most obvious targets are your clients, as well as people who signed up to your blog. It is not a good idea to send the exact same content to all of your readers. It is recommended to use segmentation of your email list, e.g., by interest, by activity, by date, by type of reader (e.g. client vs. blog subscriber). But don’t make segmentation too complicated or time consuming.

Your Message: you have to define what the message for each target audience is. Remember to personalize your message: start with their name or, if applicable, the company name. Keep your emails concise and focused. When it comes to the actual content, it is important to not just pay attention to yourself and/or your services/products. The content has to be about and for the readers. Make sure to provide value. If in doubt or uninspired, you can ask your readers what information they want. It’s often also a good idea to include some fun facts and statistics.

The Presentation: how you present your message is important. Research has shown that it’s good to include images in your message. Using 1 to 3 images typically has the greatest impact. Make sure, however, that those images are not too large: They have to load fast. It is also recommended to not send out a mail that consists only of an image. (Those typically get marked as spam by spam filters). Use short plain texts from one or more real persons on your team.

Sometimes, it can be a good idea, too, to use video: don’t embed a video, but instead include a link to the video you’d like your readers to have a look at. This works best for first mails, e.g., for a welcome email. Using either static image with a play button, or an animated gif typically results in more people watching the video.

Also keep in mind that by now a majority of people read their mail on their mobile device. Make sure your message is mobile responsive.

The Delivery Method: how are you going to deliver your message to your audiences? If you are using Office Management software, chances are that it comes with a module for email campaigns. If your law firm management software does not offer the option, you can use the services of service providers like Mailchimp, Litmus, Reachmail, Cakemail, etc.

Some additional observations: it is recommended to automate the sending of emails where possible. That is the case, e.g., for welcome mails, reminders, holiday or birthday wishes, etc. When you start planning your email campaigns, it is recommended to start with a clear goal in mind. The biggest mistake people tend to make with email marketing is not having a strategic plan. Another important aspects of emails campaigns is to keep track of your results: how many mails were opened, and read? What topics are successful, and what works best for which target audience, etc.?

A recent survey in the UK found that 7 out of 10 legal consumers would prefer to interact with a robot lawyer or law bot rather than deal with a “real” lawyer. To put matters into perspective: when we are talking, e.g., about contacting customer services only 44% prefer to deal with a chat bot, where 63% don’t mind, and 37% prefer not to interact with chat bots.

The results of a different survey can shed some light as to why people prefer robot lawyers to real lawyers. For starters, consumers are worried about the overall cost, value, and price transparency when contacting a lawyer. Both the actual cost and the final result are often uncertain. 31% of respondents thought that using the legal system costs too much money (even when the benefits justify the cost). 35% believe the end benefits don’t justify the cost, and for 28%, not knowing the final cost in advance is a hurdle.

The survey also revealed that there is plenty of room for improvement when it comes to client satisfaction, and that there often is a serious disconnect between what lawyers think their clients want, and what those clients actually want. There also is quite a disparity between how clients actually experience the process from an emotional point of view, and what their lawyers think their clients feel.

Let us have a look at some statistics, compiled from several reports:

59% of respondents say they would consider using the law when faced with a legal problem (which means a whopping 41% would not!), and 57% of respondents have dealt with a life issue that could have been handled legally but wasn’t.

Legal consumers move fast: 59% take action within 1 week; 64% expect a response within 24 hours or less. (To put things in perspective, the average delay for a lawyer to respond to a possible new client is approx. 3 working days).

When it comes to legal services, consumers want local solutions: 50% won’t travel more than 28 miles / 45 km for an attorney, while 35% won’t even travel 20 miles / 32 km.

More than 2 out of 3 legal consumers use the phone to contact a lawyer: 38% use mobile phones, 31% use a landline.

Depending on the survey, between 58% and 65% of legal consumers end up contacting a legal professional.

In the end 85% of consumers who contacted lawyers ended up hiring one. At the same time, 58% sought a consult with a lawyer they didn’t hire, and 68% communicated with a lawyer they did not hire. (At first glance this may appear contradictory, but can be explained by the fact that 42 percent of consumers contact more than one lawyer. If, e.g., I talk to three and hire one, then I did not hire 66% of the lawyers I contacted).

What factors do legal consumers take into consideration when choosing a lawyer? Stephen Fairly makes a distinction between concrete and subjective factors. The concrete factors include:

Expertise is important for 45%,

Cost for 33%,

Location for 31%,

Speed for 26%,

Specialization for 23%,

Years of Service for 23%.

The subjective factors are:

Recommendations: 40%

Reputation: 29%

Sense of Trust: 29%

Apparent Honesty: 24%

Sense of Empathy: 22%

The disparity between what legal consumers want and what lawyers think they want is greatest for three items: when the clients want to meet their lawyer in person, when they want to speak to their lawyer on the phone, and when it comes to balancing service with cost.

Meeting in person: Clients want to meet with lawyers in person when they want to learn about the legal aspects of a case (55%), when they want to tell their lawyer the details of their case (70%), and when they are signing, viewing, sharing, or delivering documents (64%). These expectations are clearly not met. Only 2% of lawyers expect to discuss the legal aspects of a case in person. Only 3% of lawyers expect their clients to tell them the facts in person. Things are slightly better when it comes to handling documents, where 43% of recognize that their clients want to handle documents in person.

Speaking on the phone: for lawyers, it typically doesn’t matter how they are contacted, as long as they are contacted, and speaking to their clients on the phone is rarely a priority. Legal consumers on the other hand, expect to speak to their lawyers over the phone to make an appointment (59%), to get quick replies to a question (46%), or to get an update on their case (37%).

Balancing service with cost: lawyers are perceived as expensive. Legal consumer are only willing to pay if they receive a certain level of service in return. This includes meeting in person or talking over the phone, which often is the most time intensive (and if billed by the hour most expensive) option. Clients also want lawyers to be available outside of their office (68%) and outside of business hours (59%).

In a series of articles in The National Law Review, Liz Wendling compiled a list of 10 insights to better meet the expectations of clients.

Skip the superficial small talk.

Connect and relate to the client.

Don’t treat clients like they are clueless about their legal options.

Help clients see why you are different than your competitors.

Clients have a name; please use it.

Show clients the value in your services, and they will care less about your fees.

Clients will tune out if you talk about yourself first.

Don’t make the money conversation uncomfortable.

If want a client’s business, ask for their business.

Reinforce their wise decision to retain you.

In conclusion, the surveys reveal that the demands and expectations of legal consumers are often not met, and that lawyers need to address these issues, for which creative solutions will have to found. In many cases, technology can be of assistance. Client portals, remote access and task automation can help lawyers be more available without sacrificing attention that could be focused elsewhere.

Our world is becoming more and more interconnected. Through our smart phones, tablets, computers, smart watches, etc., we are living online lives, where we are virtually always connected to the Internet in some way. More and more devices we are using, too, are constantly collecting and sending data. This is often referred to as the Internet of Things (IoT). In this article, we’ll explain what it is, and have a look at some examples. Then we will have a look at some legal aspects with regard to the Internet of Things.

The Wikipedia defines the Internet of things as “the network of physical devices, vehicles, home appliances, and other items embedded with electronics, software, sensors, actuators, and connectivity which enables these things to connect, collect and exchange data, creating opportunities for more direct integration of the physical world into computer-based systems, resulting in efficiency improvements, economic benefits, and reduced human exertions.” All of these devices are provided with unique identifiers (UIDs) and typically have the ability to transfer data over a network without requiring human-to-human or human-to-computer interaction. This also implies that they can be remotely monitored and, in many cases, controlled.

The number of IoT devices is increasing rapidly. In 2017, 8.4 billion devices were connected to the Internet, which was an increase of 31% compared to 2016. The estimations of how fast this expansion will occur vary widely: on the conservative side we find, e.g., the analyst firm Gartner who expects that by 2020 there will be over 26 billion connected devices. ZD-Net on the other hand mentions a number of 50 billion devices by 2020. Others, however, estimate this number to be much higher, even over 100 billion. Even in conservative estimations, the global market value of IoT is projected to reach $7.1 trillion by 2020.

So, what devices are connected? Basically any physical object can be transformed into an IoT device if it can be connected to the internet and controlled that way. Existing examples include coffee makers, washing machines, headphones, lamps, wearable devices, and even children’s toys. It also includes many vehicles, and even components of machines, the drill of an oil rig, or jet engines of an airplane which are filled with thousands of sensors collecting and transmitting data back to make sure it is operating efficiently. There are medical IoT devices like insulin injection pumps, pacemakers, etc. We already find IoT devices in our homes, in healthcare, transportation, information technology and energy infrastructure.

It should not come as a surprise that this proliferation of connected devices raises several legal issues.

A first set of issues has to do with privacy and data protection. In the EU, e.g., the GDPR applies and suppliers of IoT devices must make sure they are GDPR compliant, which isn’t always obvious. The GDPR does not only apply to the collecting and storing of data, but also to what is done with the data. Users have to consent, e.g., to those data being used for data mining.

As second set of issues has to do with security and cybercrimes. Each new device becomes a new potential target for hackers and criminals. The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) published a report in which it expressed security concerns that connected devices could, e.g., be used for enabling unauthorized access, for misuse of personal identification, and for expediting attacks on others systems. The simple truth is that the Internet of Things opens the door to a whole new range of cybercrimes, where criminals use IoT devices for extortion, for sabotage (e.g. interfering with energy), for assault, etc. In a recent hacking contest, e.g., hackers demonstrated – with permission – how they were able to take control of a driverless car within minutes.

A third set of issues has to do with eDiscovery, including eDiscovery in criminal investigations. IoT devices collect data which could be relevant as evidence in legal cases. There already are cases where the whereabouts of a person were confirmed or contradicted by the GPS systems in their car, phone or smart watch. There are cases where personal Assistants like Siri, Alexa, or Cortana, e.g., who constantly record what is being said, provided relevant evidence. A case that made headlines some months ago involved a possible homicide investigation, where an Amazon Echo (Alexa) device exonerated a suspect by confirming his alibi. (Noteworthy, too, in that case was that Amazon initially refused to hand over any data when it was requested by law enforcement, but agreed to do so when its customer asked them to hand over the data as it could – and eventually would – confirm his alibi).

In short, the Internet of Things opens the doors to plenty of new opportunities which in turn raise plenty of legal issues. For lawyers, that probably is a good thing.

The first legal applications of Artificial Intelligence already appeared several decades ago, but they never really took off. That has changed over the last few years. A lot of the recent progress is thanks to advancements in Machine Learning (ML), Deep Learning (DL), and Legal Analytics (LA). As many lawyers are not familiar with these terms, we will first explain the concepts in this article. Then we will focus on some applications, and finish with some general considerations.

Let us start with the three terms Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning and Deep Learning, and how they relate to each other. The first thing to know is that Artificial Intelligence is the broadest term. Machine Learning is a subset of Artificial Intelligence, and Deep Learning in turn is a subset of Machine Learning.

The Techopedia defines Artificial intelligence (AI) as “an area of computer science that emphasizes the creation of intelligent machines that work and react like humans. Some of the activities computers with artificial intelligence are designed for include: Speech recognition, Learning, Planning, Problem solving.” Examples of legal AI applications that are not based on machine learning include, e.g., expert systems, decision tables, certain types of process automation (that focus on repetitive tasks), as well as simple legal chatbots that also focus on one or more specific tasks, etc.

Machine Learning (ML) is one branch of AI. It based on the idea that systems can learn from data, identify patterns and make decisions with minimal human intervention. It is a method of data analysis that automates analytical model building. To this end, it uses statistical techniques that give computer systems the ability to “learn” (e.g., progressively improve performance on a specific task) from the data, without being explicitly programmed.

In an article on TechRepublic, Hope Reese explains that Deep Learning (DL) “uses some ML techniques to solve real-world problems by tapping into neural networks that simulate human decision-making. Deep learning can be expensive, and requires massive datasets to train itself on. That’s because there are a huge number of parameters that need to be understood by a learning algorithm, which can initially produce a lot of false-positives.”

The process of learning in both Machine Learning and Deep Learning can be supervised, semi-supervised or unsupervised.

When applied to legal data, Machine Learning is often referred to as Legal Analytics. It “is the application of data analysis methods and technologies within the field of law to improve efficiency, gain insight and realize greater value from available data.” (TechTarget)

Let us have a look at some of the applications of machine learning in the legal field. The applications that are available are not just for lawyers, but also, e.g., for courts and law enforcement.

In a previous article, we already mentioned Legal Research, eDiscovery and Triage Services. Legal databases are increasingly using AI to present you with the relevant laws, statutes, case law, etc. There are eDiscovery services for lawyers as well as for law enforcement that focus on finding relevant digital evidence. Both typically use triage services to rank the results in order of relevance.

Legal Analytics are also being used for due diligence (where the system creates and uses intelligent checklists), and for document review, including contract review. In some cases, the system can even go a step further and assist with the writing of documents and contracts (Intelligent Document Assembly). Some more advanced examples of process automation, e.g. for divorce cases where the whole procedure is largely automated, also rely on ML algorithms.

One of the fields where legal analytics has been making headlines is predictive analysis: using statistical models, the system makes predictions. Predictive analysis is not just used by lawyers, but in the broader legal field: there also are for applications, e.g., for courts and for law enforcement. There are systems, e.g., for:

Crime prediction and prevention that predict future crime spots.

Pretrial Release and Parole, Crime Recidivism Prediction

Judicial analytics and litigation analytics predict the chances of success or what the anticipated outcome is in certain cases. These systems can e.g. be as specific as to take previous rulings by the presiding judge into account.

ML is also successfully being used in crime detection. There are AI systems that monitor what cameras are registering, or that use a network of microphones to detect shots being fired. In the news recently was a story how facial recognition software was used to scan people attending a concert, which led to several arrests being made.

These are just some examples. An article that was recently published in Tech Emergence (“AI in Law and Legal Practice – A Comprehensive View of 35 Current Applications”) gives an overview of 35 applications.

So, a lot of progress has been made in recent years in the fields of legal analytics / legal machine learning. Still, there are certain issues and limitations to take into account when it comes to the legal field. A first issue has to do with privacy and confidentiality. Law firms who want to use their client data may need consent by those clients, and will have to anonymize the data. They also have to remain GDPR compliant. A second issue has to do with bias: in a previous article we mentioned how these AI systems inherit our biases. A third issue has to do with transparency: most neural networks present a conclusion without explaining how it came to that conclusion. If used in criminal cases, this constitutes a violation of the rights of defence. In civil cases, too, judges have to explain their decisions, and merely referring to the decision an AI system made is not sufficient. Lastly, there also is a cognitive aspect to the work lawyers do, and at present the cognitive abilities of legal ML systems are (still) extremely limited. They do not, e.g., know how to appreciate or emulate common sense.